Reading on Vacation

The week before the children went to Mexico I took them to the used book store to purchase some books to take on their trip. Viva was very focused. With a little help from me she quickly found two princess books for the trip and then spent her time looking at other books. I added another two books I found to her pile. Viva has just started reading books on her own. She has been a good reader for quite a while, but she was reluctant to read on her own. Through careful selection of short chapter books (40 pages), she now reads on her own some of the time.

Finding books for Jake took a lot of patience and time. I found a number of books I thought would be in his reading range, but he said they were too hard. Bentley found Jake a book that he thought Jake would like (something about dragons), but after Jake read the first page he said it was too difficult for him to read on his own. I was surprised because Jake has been reading short chapter books on his own for a couple of months now. I had to search harder, but eventually I found some books that met Jake's approval. (Authors of children's books need to be careful to not put too many difficult words (like minstrel!) on the first page. Ease the young reader into the book before unleashing the vocabulary.) 

Then it was time to help Bentley. I thought he would be easy to help, but he wasn't. He wasn't in the mood to look for new books to read even though he had been eager to go to the book store. I had hoped he'd find a few books on his own while I was helping Viva and Jake, but he didn't. It's harder to find books at the store than online. Online we can read reviews to see if the book is well liked by other young readers and to check if the main characters are good role models. I thought I'd found the perfect book when I located a super volume in the Warrior series that he likes so well. The books in the series are usually about 340 long. The super volume is 510--the equivalent of 1 and 1/2 books. I thought it would make the perfect vacation book because it would last longer. Bentley said he didn't want to read a book that long. He has before and it turned him off that book series. The kid is only 6 years old. No matter how good a young reader he is, a 510 page book is looooooong. I can relate. I won't read fantasy books that are too thick. If it takes an author ten 1000 page books to tell their story, they need a better editor.

Bentley ended up choosing a few shorter chapter books. At first I was a little skeptical of his choices because he'd be done reading them in an hour, but then I reminded myself that just because he's been reading 340 page books, it doesn’t mean he can't still enjoy an 80 to 110 page book. It's all good. Before he left for Mexico Kara purchased him three longer books on the Kindle reader. Bentley had them read in a week and Kara had to buy a few more online books to finish the trip and for the plane ride home.